literature. He said that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess
that's true. The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two
ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and
you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. It takes
a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years.
But as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance
of literature, they didn't say anything about my books. Maybe they think
they've disappeared. If they do, that just shows their ignorance on the
general subject of literature. I am not as young as I was several years
ago, and maybe I'm not so fashionable, but I'd be willing to take
my chances with Mr. Scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of
literature to the Century Publishing Company. And I haven't got much of
a pull here, either. I often think that the highest compliment ever
paid to my poor efforts was paid by Darwin through President Eliot, of
Harvard College. At least, Eliot said it was a compliment, and I always
take the opinion of great men like college presidents on all such
subjects as that.
I went out to Cambridge one day a few years ago and called on President
Eliot. In the course of the conversation he said that he had just
returned from England, and that he was very much touched by what he
considered the high compliment Darwin was paying to my books, and he
went on to tell me something like this:
“Do you know that there is one room in Darwin's house, his bedroom,
where the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? One is a
plant he is growing and studying while it grows” (it was one of those
insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for
the particular delectation of Mr. Darwin) “and the other some books that
lie on the night table at the head of his bed. They are your books, Mr.
Clemens, and Mr. Darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep.”
My friends, I thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it
the highest one that was ever paid to me. To be the means of soothing to
sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like Darwin's was
something that I had never hoped for, and now that he is dead I never
hope to be able to do it again.
THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER
AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900
Col. William L. Brown, the former editor of the Daily News, as
president of the club, introduced Mr. Clemens as the principal
ornament of American literature.
I must say that I have already begun to regret that I left my gun at
home. I've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with
just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs I will
certainly use a gun on that chairman. It is my privilege to compliment
him in return. You behold before you a very, very old man. A cursory
glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. His features seem to
reveal a person dead to all honorable instincts—they seem to bear the
traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for
the most part, and now altogether, in the Sunday-school of a life that
may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or
will riz—I mean to say, will rise. His private character is altogether
suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has not. If you
examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features,
because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor—mere
effects of a great spirit upon a weak body—mere accidents of a great
career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues,
and he practises them all—secretly—always secretly. You all know him
so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here. Gentlemen,
Colonel Brown.
THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN TO MR. CARNEGIE AT THE DEDICATION
OF THE NEW YORK ENGINEERS' CLUB, DECEMBER 9, 1907
Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who,
quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day
when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small
change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes.
It seems to me that I was around here in the neighborhood of the Public
Library about fifty or sixty years ago. I don't deny the circumstance,
although I don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was
not to be printed until I am dead, unless I'm dead now. I had that $3 in
change, and I remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat. I
have prospered since. Now I have plenty of money and a disposition to
squander it, but I can't. One of those trust companies is taking care of
it.
Now, as this is probably the last time that I shall be out after
nightfall this winter, I must say that I have come here with a mission,
and I would make my errand of value.
Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Carnegie to-night. I was
expecting them. They are very gratifying to me.
I have been a guest of honor myself, and I know what Mr. Carnegie is
experiencing now. It is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments
and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of
us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of
our condemnation.
Just look at Mr. Carnegie's face. It is fairly scintillating with
fictitious innocence. You would think, looking at him, that he had
never committed a crime in his life. But no—look at his pestiferious
simplified spelling. You can't any of you imagine what a crime that has
been. Torquemada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie. That old fellow shed some
blood in the Inquisition, but Mr. Carnegie has brought destruction to
the entire race. I know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was,
just the same. He's got us all so we can't spell anything.
The trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end.
He meant well, but he attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the
disease. He ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. There's not
a vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can
hitch anything to. Look at the “h's” distributed all around. There's
“gherkin.” What are you going to do with the “h” in that? What the
devil's the use of “h” in gherkin, I'd like to know. It's one thing I
admire the English for: they just don't mind anything about them at all.
But look at the “pneumatics” and the “pneumonias” and the rest of them.
A real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving
us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of
this present silly alphabet, which I fancy was invented by a drunken
thief. Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about
fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't
spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden legs.
Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell “pterodactyl,” not
even the prisoner at the bar. I'd like to hear him try once—but not
in public, for it's too near Sunday, when all extravagant histrionic
entertainments are barred. I'd like to hear him try in private, and when
he got through trying to spell “pterodactyl” you wouldn't know whether
it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or
walked with its wings. The chances are that he would give it tusks and
make it lay eggs.
Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for him—if
he'll take the risk. If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a system
of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every shade
of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in any
tongue that we could not spell accurately. That would be competent,
adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair
punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of
simplified spelling. If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell
me unless you know which b-o-w I mean, and it is the same with r-o-w,
b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful
wedlock and don't know their own origin.
Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of
inadequate and incompetent, things would be different. Spelling reform
has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. There is the whole tribe of
them, “row” and “read” and “lead”—a whole family who don't know who they
are. I ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one.
If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of
comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of
a man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to
recall the lady hog and the future ham.
It's a rotten alphabet. I appoint Mr. Carnegie to get after it, and
leave simplified spelling alone.
Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco
earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never
have had if spelling had been left all alone.
Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and made him more comfortable
than he would have been had he received only compliment after
compliment, and I wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all
right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far.
SPELLING AND PICTURES
ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, AT THE
WALDORF-ASTORIA, SEPTEMBER 18, 1906
I am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified
spelling. I have come here because they cannot all be reached except
through you. There are only two forces that can carry light to all the
corners of the globe—only two—the sun in the heavens and the Associated
Press down here. I may seem to be flattering the sun, but I do not mean
it so; I am meaning only to be just and fair all around. You speak with
a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and
intellects, as you—except Rudyard Kipling, and he cannot do it without
your help. If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified
forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole
spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties
are at an end.
Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the
world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and
angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out
of Associated Press despatches. And so I beg you, I beseech you—oh,
I implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. Do this daily,
constantly, persistently, for three months—only three months—it is all
I ask. The infallible result?—victory, victory all down the line. For by
that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted to
the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged forms
will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. And we shall
be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and
diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no
man addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose
some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Do not doubt
it. We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places
with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change
and happy in it. We do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and
tushes after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while.
Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world? That is the idea. It is
my public attitude; privately I am merely seeking my own profit. We all
do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest
is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private
interests. In 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to
make a noise, I was indifferent to it; more—I even irreverently scoffed
at it. What I needed was an object-lesson, you see. It is the only way
to teach some people. Very well, I got it. At that time I was scrambling
along, earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a
word, compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present.
I was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron
contract. One day there came a note from the editor requiring me to
write ten pages—on this revolting text: “Considerations concerning the
alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous
superimbrication of the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the
unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects.”
Ten pages of that. Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled
railroad train. Seven cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family
in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so
as to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor
can ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got
graft in it for him and the magazine. I said, “Read that text,
Jackson, and let it go on the record; read it out loud.” He read
it: “Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal
extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the
Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its
plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects.”
I said, “You want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer
thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal?”
He said, “A word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you
going to do about it?”
I said, “Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. What's an average
English word?”
He said, “Six letters.”
I said, “Nothing of the kind; that's French, and includes the spaces
between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half.
By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary
and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. I can
put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not
another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. My page is
worth eighty-four dollars to me. It takes exactly as long to fill your
magazine page with long words as it does with short ones-four hours.
Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours.
I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor. For the family's
sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents,
because I can get the same money for 'city.' I never write 'policeman,'
because I can get the same price for 'cop.' And so on and so on. I never
write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can
humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents;
I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene text, please; count
the words.”
He counted and said it was twenty-four. I asked him to count the
letters. He made it two hundred and three.
I said, “Now, I hope you see the whole size of your crime. With my
vocabulary I would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five
letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your
inhuman twenty-four I would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents.
Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three
hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same
labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars. I do not wish to
work upon this scandalous job by the piece. I want to be hired by the
year.” He coldly refused. I said:
“Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you
ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness.”
Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I
was not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an
anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous Ornithorhyncus, and rotten
to the heart with holoaophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. God
forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours.
From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member
of the heaven-born institution, the International Association for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with Carnegie's
Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work....
Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally,
sanely—yes, and calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the
essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely
to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words
of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome
forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a
letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she
never saw a spelling-book in her life. The spelling is her own. There
isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It reduces the fonetics to the last
gasp—it squeezes the surplusage out of every word—there's no spelling
that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House. And
as for the punctuation, there isn't any. It is all one sentence, eagerly
and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. The
letter is absolutely genuine—I have the proofs of that in my possession.
I can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter
presently and comfort your eyes with it. I will read the letter:
“Miss dear freind I took some Close into the armerry and give them to
you to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to treble you
but i got to have one of them Back it was a black oll wolle Shevyott
With a jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and palsy
menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it
belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about it i thoght she was
willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to
Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has
got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For
her i gels you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i
torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful
about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off
seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to
take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And
see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for
it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True
freind
“i liked your appearance very Much”
Now you see what simplified spelling can do.
It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions
like a sewer. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print
all your despatches in it.
Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word:
I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of
the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think
I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little
while that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with
these old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make any trouble about
it at all. I shall soon be where they won't care how I spell so long as
I keep the Sabbath.
There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography,
and it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its
present condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their
literature in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish,
and we keep the forms as they are while we have got one million people
coming in here from foreign countries every year and they have got
to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps them back
and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the
language, if they ever do learn. This is merely sentimental argument.
People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer and Shakespeare and
a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has
been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it
because of its ancient and hallowed associations.
Now, I don't see that there is any real argument about that. If that
argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the
flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so
long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness
for them on account of the associations. Why, it is like preserving a
cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it
by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity.
I think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our
family cancer, and I wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut
out and let the family cancer go.
Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young
person like yourselves. I am exhausted by the heat of the day. I must
take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry
it away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of
the righteous. There is nothing much left of me but my age and my
righteousness, but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you
always keep your youth.
BOOKS AND BURGLARS
ADDRESS TO THE REDDING (CONN.) LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,
OCTOBER 28, 1908
Suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the
burglars who happened along and broke into my house—taking a lot of
things they didn't need, and for that matter which I didn't need—had
first made entry into this institution.
Picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their
dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing
moral truths and getting a moral uplift. The whole course of their
lives would have been changed. As it was, they kept straight on in their
immoral way and were sent to jail.
For all we know, they may next be sent to Congress.
And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly. Now, I
have known so many burglars—not exactly known, but so many of them have
come near me in my various dwelling-places, that I am disposed to allow
them credit for whatever good qualities they possess.
Chief among these, and, indeed, the only one I just now think of, is
their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's
sleep.
Noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their
visitation is to murder sleep later on.
Now we are prepared for these visitors. All sorts of alarm devices have
been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has
been electrified. The burglar who steps within this danger zone will
set loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our
elaborate system of defences. As for the fate of the trespasser, do not
seek to know that. He will never be heard of more.
AUTHORS' CLUB
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. CLEMENS, LONDON,
JUNE, 1899
Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant.
It does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much. It
only pleases and delights me. I have not gone beyond the age when
embarrassment is possible, but I have reached the age when I know how to
conceal it. It is such a satisfaction to me to hear Sir Walter Besant,
who is much more capable than I to judge of my work, deliver a judgment
which is such a contentment to my spirit.
Well, I have thought well of the books myself, but I think more of them
now. It charms me also to hear Sir Spencer Walpole deliver a similar
judgment, and I shall treasure his remarks also. I shall not discount
the praises in any possible way. When I report them to my family they
shall lose nothing. There are, however, certain heredities which come
down to us which our writings of the present day may be traced to. I,
for instance, read the Walpole Letters when I was a boy. I absorbed
them, gathered in their grace, wit, and humor, and put them away to be
used by-and-by. One does that so unconsciously with things one really
likes. I am reminded now of what use those letters have been to me.
They must not claim credit in America for what was really written in
another form so long ago. They must only claim that I trimmed this,
that, and the other, and so changed their appearance as to make them
seem to be original. You now see what modesty I have in stock. But it
has taken long practice to get it there.
But I must not stand here talking. I merely meant to get up and give my
thanks for the pleasant things that preceding speakers have said of me.
I wish also to extend my thanks to the Authors' Club for constituting me
a member, at a reasonable price per year, and for giving me the benefit
of your legal adviser.